Ever Night
by Denise Nicole
Summary: Extreme Risk from B'Elanna's POV


Ever Night: by Denise N. Rodier  
  
Rated: PG for mild language  
  
Code: P/T Mega-spoiler for "Extreme Risk"  
  
Disclaimer: Tom, B'Elanna, Voyager, the rest of the crew, and the episode "Extreme Risk" belong to Paramount. I just borrowed them to tell a story. I am making no profit whatsoever from this. Trust me, if I were, life would be completely different.  
  
   
  
   
  
   
  
Ever Night  
  
By: Denise N. Rodier  
  
The darkness swirled around me, caressing me like a long lost lover, becoming my companion. When it first touched me, I wanted to withdraw, to run from it. But it held me close and whispered in my ear, "Don't worry. I'll be here for you . . . like they couldn't."  
  
Soon, though, I felt it begin to draw away. I panicked. I had to keep it close, couldn't be abandoned again.  
  
I hurt myself.  
  
I didn't mean to. Not at first, anyway. I was fighting with some holo- creature or another, on the highest level I could convince the computer to let me compete on with the safeties turned off. I was winning, too. But one swing of my bat'leth missed and my opponent cut me. I put my hand to my shoulder and told the computer to freeze program. I looked at my fingers. The blood on them glistened like liquid rubies. I felt the darkness move closer and envelope me once again. "The pain is here for you, to tell you you're alive. Listen to it."  
  
I listened. I needed it.  
  
I needed it more and more each day. My body betrayed me and healed the wounds I didn't need to heal to hide. Those were the ones I wanted to stay, needed to stay. But they left me, just like everyone else. The darkness stayed through it, encouraging me, pushing me, telling me to keep going. Nobody could stand in my way.  
  
Almost nobody.  
  
I was just going to drop off those damned thruster specs. I had no intention whatsoever of staying. But he backed me into a corner. Normally, I would fight my way out of the corner. But this time all I could do was stand and cower, staring at him. Tom, with that worried look in his eyes. All I could manage to tell him was that I was tired. It was the truth, too. I was tired. Tired of being near the light other people gave off. Tired of needing more and more and more of the pain to keep me going. Tired of turning off safeties and hiding logs. Tired of looking into Tom's eyes and seeing the love I could not return, for my own emotions had disappeared into the darkness.  
  
I ran from the look in his eyes.  
  
I ran back to the holodeck and its world of possibilities. I chose a monster in physical form in hopes of banishing the monsters in my mind. The faces of everyone that left and would leave were the monsters that simply wouldn't go away. The darkness was there fighting it all with me, chanting at me, leering at me. "He'll leave you now, just like all the rest. It's only a matter of time." When it finally gave me leave to return to my quarters, I slunk back from the eyes of the crew I passed, in the hope that they would just leave me be. Maybe the fear of that, too. I left the lights low and sat down on my sofa, looking at my arms and shoulder. I poked at one particularly large scrape and was confused by the fact it didn't hurt. None of it hurt. I went to my bathroom where my dermal regenerator was and something there caught my eye.  
  
My reflection.  
  
I stood and walked over to it, touched it. I let out a small gasp. The darkness was no longer around me. It was in me, looking out through my eyes. There was nothing else present in those brown eyes I used to know so well but the darkness. Everything else had been swept away with the pain, buried too deep, hidden too often. I knew then something had to be done. When I saw my chance I leapt for it. On my way to the holodeck from the shuttle bay, my own words beat a steady tattoo in my head.  
  
Fatal flaw. Fatal flaw.  
  
Funny thing is, I don't even really remember the accident. The Doctor said it's due to the head injury. I do however, remember waking up in sickbay. And I do remember Captain Janeway's face when she first came to see me. Hundreds of emotions were swirling in that one woman. Anger, betrayal, disappointment, confusion, concern, and the light that was Kathryn Janeway all were visible in the windows of her soul. For one split second, I considered asking her if I could borrow one of those emotions just so I could remember what it felt like to feel. Then the second passed and I knew I had to hide myself from her, couldn't let her see the me that life had left behind.  
  
She wouldn't let me hide.  
  
She shot down every one of my defenses. The accident didn't cause the injuries. Engineering didn't cause the injuries. I caused the injuries. She just couldn't figure out why. She didn't believe me when I said I was fine. Hell, I wouldn't have believed me. Fractured vertebrae and internal bleeding do not a fine person make. I would have been fine if she had just left right then. But something inside me blurted out the first bit of truth during the whole conversation. I dropped my head to my chest when she said she was sorry. "I'm not," I answered in kind. She gently touched my chin and forced me to look in her eyes. She searched my own eyes and what exactly she found, I may never know. But a shot of electricity ran through me as she said, "Now I know something's wrong." It was the first arrow that weakened the armor that had been so carefully constructed.  
  
If I only would have known what was coming next.  
  
As I lay in my quarters, staring at the ceiling, I could hear the voice of the darkness running through my head. "Don't listen to her. Nothing is wrong with you. They're the ones who are wrong." The voice was so loud, so insistent, that I almost missed the chime of my door. I tried to send the caller away by claiming sleep, but my doors slid open and I sat up quickly. Chakotay walked through with a slight smile on his face. All I could do was thank whatever gods were out there that it wasn't the Doctor with more of his prying questions about what I was thinking and feeling. If I had known the answers, I wouldn't have been in the condition I was. Since, I mentioned that the Doctor felt that familiar surroundings would help speed my recovery, Chakotay felt inclined to ask what I was recovering from. I told Chakotay that the Doctor believed I was suffering from clinical depression. Huh. The only thing I was suffering from was the Doctor.  
  
"Are you depressed?"  
  
The question completely caught me off guard. Nobody had asked me that question. They just told me the answer. Trying not to show Chakotay anything, I crossed my arms in front of me. The darkness said, "Who does he think he is, ship's counselor?" I thought it was a good enough question myself. I repeated it to Chakotay. Then he too backed me against a wall. He confronted me about turning off safety protocols in my programs. I was found out. I tried to make excuses, saying nobody was getting hurt. Then he said something that made my stomachs drop to my feet. He said we could go take a look at them. Thank Kahless my holodeck privileges had been revoked.  
  
Chakotay, unfortunately, had the power to restore them.  
  
While walking through the corridor to the holodeck, I was running my holodeck programs through my mind, trying to think of the most innocuous to show him. Orbital sky diving wouldn't be too bad. Neither would the white water rafting. When we reached the holodeck, I raised my arm to the control panel to punch in the file number, but Chakotay grabbed my arm. I looked down to the ground and waited to hear which program he would chose.  
  
"Computer, program Torres Zeta-One"  
  
I looked up at him in shock. The darkness was swirling around me like a hurricane, turning with a dull roar. "Don't go in," it told me. "What are you doing?!" I managed to gasp out, backing away. He grabbed my arms and held me tight, dragging me in to the holodeck. The caves we entered started spinning as gunfire and shouts surrounded us. I fought Chakotay with all the strength I had, which wasn't nearly enough to escape his iron grip. He swung me around to face him as he turned over a body laying face down on the floor of the cave.  
  
It was one of the faces in my nightmares, one of the monsters.  
  
Chakotay asked me who it was. The darkness told me not to answer, but a belligerent voice escaped through the chink in the armor that Janeway caused earlier. "Li-Paz. Don't you recognize him?" The darkness gasped "No!" as Chakotay began to drag me around the cave to look at the rest of the bodies lying haphazardly around. He named each person lying there. He turned me to face him again. "You created a program to watch all our Maquis friends get slaughtered! What I want to know is why!" I tried to distract him. "I thought we came down here to talk about safety protocols. This has nothing to do with that."  
  
At the next thing he said, I knew I was caught.  
  
"I'm not so sure. The logs show you only ran this program for 47 seconds - - the day after I gave you the news about the massacre. Then you shut it down and started running the most dangerous programs you could find with the safeties off. Why?" The darkness rose behind Chakotay and said, "You have to get out of here." I managed to break away from him as I said, "I'm leaving." Chakotay sealed the doors. "He can't do this!" the darkness yelled. "You can't do this!" I yelled. "The hell I can't! You're not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on," Chakotay yelled back.  
  
The roar increased. I had nowhere else to run.  
  
I stopped moving and looked at Chakotay. He continued, "Why are you intentionally trying to hurt yourself?" I didn't really know the answer. "Are you trying to commit suicide?" he continued. The question was as ludicrous to me as the possibility should have been to him. "NO," I said with absolute certainty. "Then why?" he asked, concern written all over his face. "Because. . ." I began. The darkness swirled around me and said, "If you tell him, I will leave you, and then you will be alone. This thought frightened me more than any other, but I couldn't stop now. I had to keep going. "Because if I sprain my ankle, at least I feel something." Chakotay looked confuse. I walked towards him, leaving the darkness standing behind me. "I'm not trying to kill myself! I'm trying to see if I'm still alive."  
  
Chakotay didn't get it.  
  
I walked past him and looked over some of the bodies lying there. Even now, I still didn't feel anything for them. Maybe that would be how I could get my point across to him. "When you look at all our friends laying here, what do you feel?" Chakotay took the lead. "Sad. Angry. Maybe a little guilty that I couldn't be there to die with them." That was exactly my point. "Not me. I don't feel anything at all." That made Chakotay angry. "B'Elanna, the Maquis were like our adopted family. I can understand you trying to block out that kind of pain. . ." Maybe he didn't get it after all. "You don't understand." I sat down. "It's not just the pain. I don't feel anything. Not about Tom, you, my job." Chakotay tried to tell me that I just couldn't stop feeling. That sooner or later I would have to grieve.  
  
He was right.  
  
I could feel the dam welling up. "Why?" I choked out. "Just so I can go through it all over again?" At Chakotay's look of confusion, I continued. "When I was six, my father walked out on me. When I was nineteen, I got kicked out of Starfleet. A few years later I got separated from the Maquis. And just when I start to feel safe you tell me that all our old friends had been slaughtered. The way I figure it, I've lost every family I've ever had." Chakotay looked at me and told me that I had a new family, here on Voyager, and they weren't going to leave me. I could still see the darkness nearby as I told him, "You can't promise me that." He admitted that he couldn't but that they weren't going to let me stop living my life or break my neck on the holodeck. "You're going to have to find another way to deal with this. "I don't know how." He was paged to the bridge then, and I could tell he didn't want to leave. I told him to go. I needed to be alone then, so I could think about what he said.  
  
As soon as he left, the darkness swooped back in.  
  
"He's wrong, you know. They will leave you. Everyone has so far," it cajoled me. I stood up and walked over to the bodies of Nelson and Sahreen. "Not everyone. You haven't left me yet." It laughed at me. "I will. Just wait. Then you'll really be all alone." I looked at it. "Well, if you're going to leave, why don't you just do it now so I can get on with my life." It just stared at me as I went in search of Chakotay. After the computer told me he was heading to the Delta Flyer, I knew what I had to do. I ran down the corridors, trying to catch up with him. The darkness swirled behind me, trying to catch up to me. I managed to convince Chakotay to let me go in his place.  
  
Barely.  
  
Tom was the first thing I saw when I boarded the Delta Flyer. Vorik in my seat was the second thing I saw. I sat watching my monitors as we dove through the atmosphere, muttering to myself, "I can do this, I can do this." The darkness sitting behind me chanted, "No, you can't. No, you can't." When the microfractures started to form, I had enough energy built up to power the ship itself. I settled for ripping off a panel and creating something to block the imminent hull breach. Using a power cell, an EPS relay, and a phaser, I cobbled together what I hoped would be a force field. As I finished positioning my spur-of-the-moment contraption, I saw the darkness step in front of the wall and roar, "You need me!" I activated the device and a force field flickered in front of it. The hull breached and the roar of the outside atmosphere replaced the roar of the darkness as it was sucked out of the Delta Flyer and out of my life.  
  
I didn't need it. Not anymore.  
  
I talked to Chakotay briefly when I got back to Voyager, mainly to reassure him that even though I was not completely well, I was doing better. I thanked him for what he had done to me, for me. He was able to knock down the rest of the armor I had fashioned around my soul. Then, for old times' sake, I threatened to break his neck if he ever did anything to me again like he did in the holodeck. He smiled, leaving me to enter the mess hall. My stomach was almost queasy with nervousness. What if I was wrong, and I wasn't better at all? What if I would be doomed to feeling nothing for the rest of my life? I ordered a stack of banana pancakes, just like the ones my grandmother, and now Neelix, made for me to try and cheer me up. I grabbed my fork and, cutting a piece off, took a bite. The warmth and familiarity spread through me like a warm fire. I smiled, actually happy for the first time in many months.  
  
Then I heard the mess hall door open. Tom walked in and stopped short.  
  
The smile slowly fell off my face. He came for me. He actually could still care for me. Could I still care for him? I stood and walked over to him. "Tom, I. . ." What do I say? How could I express everything that has happened?  
  
Tom continued my lack of thought. "B'Elanna, I. . ." What indeed? There was nothing to be said.  
  
Then it was Tom who swirled around me, caressing me like the long lost lover he was, re-becoming my companion. When he first touched me, I wanted to withdraw, to run from him. But he held me close and whispered in my ear, "Don't worry. I'll be here for you."  
  
   
  
   
  
   
  
   
  
The End  
  
   


End file.
